Vance stared at the small screen on his wrist with wide, trembling eyes. The glowing green words stayed fixed on the display, burning into his mind like a hot iron. He clutched his left arm, spinning around to check if anyone in the busy reception hall was watching him.Without wasting another second, Vance hurried past the long wooden counters and ran straight up the central staircase to Jax's private office.He didn't even knock on the door before pushing it open. "Boss Jax! Look at this! It is a direct signal from inside the sky city!"Jax was sitting behind his neat glass desk, looking through a floating system blueprint of the new roof defense array. He raised his head, his dark eyes landing calmly on Vance's pale face."What signal?" Jax asked, his voice steady as always.Vance rushed forward and placed his wrist right on the edge of the desk, turning the screen toward Jax. "An encrypted transmission, Boss Jax! It came through my old sky pilot comms channel. Read it!"Jax leaned

The dark northern sky grew heavy as three colossal shadows drifted over the mountain ridge. The floating Sky Fortresses looked like massive iron castles suspended in thin air, their heavy metal hulls casting long, cold shadows over the outer borders of the ten-mile zone.BZZZZT!A sharp, painful buzzing noise hummed through the air as a wave of dark blue energy rippled out from the lead fortress.Instant silence followed. Every radio receiver, long-distance communication horn, and signal mirror across the entire district deadened at once. The electromagnetic jammer field completely cut off all outgoing and incoming communications between the refugees and the outside world.High above on the central deck of the lead Sky Fortress, Admiral Vane stood with his hands resting on his golden sword handle. He wore a crisp white military coat lined with silver fur, his chest covered in shiny medals. Through a long brass spyglass, he looked down at the tiny hypermarket building with a cold, arro

The two remaining Sky Fortresses hovered low in the northern clouds, their heavy iron hulls tilted steeply downward toward the two-story hypermarket.Inside the floating control rooms, desperate captains screamed orders into their comms channels. The heavy blast doors under both warships slid open completely, exposing twelve massive cannon barrels that glowed with a blinding, dangerous purple fire."Fire everything!" the lead captain shrieked, his face pale with pure terror. "Burn that store into dust!"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!A massive salvo of twelve heavy plasma artillery shells shot out from the twin warships at the exact same time. The sky turned bright purple as a river of concentrated destructive energy tore through the clouds, diving straight down toward the hypermarket like twelve screaming meteors.Down on the city streets, thousands of refugees gasped in fear, holding each other tight as the ground beneath their feet began to vibrate from the sheer force of the incoming strike.V

The bright red warning screen flickered softly in the air before Jax's face. The red numbers of the countdown clock ticked down steadily, leaving forty-eight hours before the sky council fired their orbital weapon.Jax tapped his fingers on the glass desk, looking over at Mia, Vance, and General Ironwood."Forty-eight hours," Jax said, his voice as calm as a quiet morning. "We are not going to sit down here and wait for them to charge their big cannon. We are going to hit them first."General Ironwood stepped forward, his heavy armor clanking. "Boss Jax, their sky city is floating high up in the clouds. Their outer shields can stop any flying ship or missile we send up.""We are not flying up," Jax replied with a cool smile. "We are going through the floor."Jax stood up and led his team down the central staircase, heading straight toward the massive scrap yard behind the hypermarket.Outside the back gates, hundreds of surface workers were already pulling apart the three crashed Sky

The small silver beacon clicked rapidly in Jax's hand, its bright red light pulsing like a miniature heartbeat.Vance stared at the tiny metal ball in utter horror, his knees knocking together under his leather pants. "Boss Jax! They have our exact coordinates! The sky council can track our store's position through space now! Crush it! Destroy it right now!"Mia raised her dagger, stepping forward with a sharp frown. "I can smash it to pieces with my blade, Boss Jax."Jax held up his left hand, stopping them both. A cold, wicked smile spread slowly across his face as he looked at the flashing red light."Why destroy a good gift from our enemies?" Jax said softly, his voice full of supreme confidence. "They sent this tiny toy down here to spy on us. It would be rude not to send something back."Instead of smashing the tracking beacon into dust, Jax turned around and walked out of the dim power room, heading straight back up to the main workshop where the new Sub-Spatial Infiltration Ga